Being Domestic in India

Apparently I’m throwing myself a birthday party on Tuesday. Somehow it has gotten out to everyone that my birthday is coming up, and that is the power of Facebook.  Everyone keeps asking me what I’m doing, which I have taken to mean that I have to do something. The ideal introvert birthday for me is to take a quiet sleepy day at home and eat only junk food. I already know that is not going to happen.  Somehow, against all stereotypical introverted characteristics, I have been able to make a lot of friends who all know it is my birthday and all expect me to do something. I have agreed to make a cake, something I feel that the birthday girl should never have to do for herself. Also things the birthday girl should never have to worry about doing: buying her own candles, cleaning her house in preparation for lots of people coming over, having lots of people over.

Anyway, as I plan for making cake and cleaning my house, I’ve been thinking about my increasing domesticity. The more I live alone in various places around the world, the more I get tired of eating the two things I know how to cook, so I start branching out. Today, for example, I made nasi goreng (fried rice) without the bumbu packets from Indonesia, which would have made it better, but it was actually quite good. The tricky part was pouring it from the pan into the bowl. Half ended up on the floor and I had to sweep with the second broom I’ve bought in the last two weeks. First I was trying to use the Indian-style broom, which was already in the house because I am ridiculously cheap, and I don’t care so much about cleaning that I would actually worry about the type of broom that I have. But it turns out that the Indian-style broom is short like a sapu lidi with long floppy straw to sweep with, and you are supposed to squat and hop as you swish the dust outside of your house. I realized that the physical effort of doing it that way was more than I wanted to expend in the interest of not making footprints in the dust on my floor. So I bought another broom with a long handle, but the bristles squeak on the floor and make me want to claw out my eardrums. Then after hours of sweeping and screaming in pain, the only result is that the dust on the floor has been streaked into interesting patterns.  Fortunately, the newest $3 broom that I brought works well and only requires minimal effort to swish across the floor.

Another domestic triumph: I changed the light bulb in my bathroom. It took 3 days and two minutes—three days to decide that it was necessary, one minute for me to drag a chair into the bathroom, another minute for me to find an old light bulb that I had unscrewed and pried out of the wall with my trusty pocketknife. I realized the light bulb still worked, so why should I go to the store and buy a new one? Yes, the cheapest girl in India also thought that would be a waste so she didn’t bother.  It took 3 days for her to bother about changing the light bulb at all since she has showered in the dark plenty of times—the bathroom in the camp in Yemen didn’t have lights, so she is great at finding my shampoo and lathering up with minimal light.  Basically, I just kept my bathroom door open while I showered to get the light from my room (it’s so convenient to live alone). Since in one of my previous home-improvement times I took off the shower-head, the pressure is pretty good and I realized that a drops of water were spraying out of my bathroom (Indian showers, like many around the world, do not have shower doors or curtains to keep the water off the floor of the rest of the bathroom. Instead, after showering, you just squeegee the water into the drain.), and some tiny drops landed on my kindle which was on the bed and now there is a small corner of the screen that is messed up. It keeps me guessing the last letter of the last word on the page as I read, which is probably ultimately going to be really good for my brain and keep me from losing my mind too young.  But it is also annoying, and it propelled me to do the two-minute light bulb changing routine mentioned above. And the good news is that there are plenty of other useless light bulbs around the apartment that I can replace if I need them later…guest room light bulb? Unnecessary as STILL no one has come to visit me. Balcony light bulb? Unnecessary as I never go out there at night.

So my house will be clean for my birthday party festivities and maybe well lit, and I will make a cake that people will probably like, although one boy in my apartment building said that my cake was very sweet. I am surprised that he has the ability to make that judgment as Indian desserts include donut-holes soaked in buckets of syrup and curdled cheese balls marinated in sugar goo. As you eat these diabetes bombs, you feel your teeth squeak as the sugar coats them with impending cavities. But my cakes are definitely sweeter than the cardboard fluff-frosted ones you can get at the bakery that taste like dried sea-sponges. And I have lived in China, so you know that I have tried dried sea-sponges.

Before we get off the topic of Indian sugar, the other day I bought some brown sugar, which I have been substituting with white sugar, as I haven’t seen brown sugar anywhere here. I opened the box and noticed an odd sticky consistency. I looked at the ingredients on the side of the box and was realized that what I had bought was literally brown sugar. The ingredients read “sugar and caramel-colouring.” So the cookies I make are the right color, but this isn’t exactly the tasty crumbly brown sugar that some people like to eat out of the box…ok, maybe just me, but I do love me some brown sugar.  And why can’t I find gummy candies ANYWHERE in India? Worms, bears, beans, sour sugar-covered children, I miss them…

So before I sign off to go psych myself up for a social event at my house with an ending time that I have no control over, here is a photo of me at the last birthday party I went to. My field coordinator’s wife’s birthday. Yes, I made the cake. Little Merrison sang “Happy to you” over and over, the only part of the song that she cares about. There was great Indian food (aloo prantha, various curries, spicy chutney), 4 people, and it was not at my house so I could leave whenever I felt like it…